How To Stop Getting Off Track As A Creative (4 Step Process)

If you’re anything like me, you’re probably familiar with the feeling of making big plans, being super driven to carry them out, actually starting to do that…

…and then somehow ending up completely lost.

This might be related to building your creative career, or just being creative, or really anything you’re trying to work on in life.

You’re actively trying to make progress but it feels completely all over the place—more than you think it should.

And you often end up feeling like you’re actually going backwards instead of (even slowly inching) forward.

We know progress isn’t always linear; it’s not realistic to expect we can always go from point A to point B or C, D, E, etc. without any hiccups or deviating from the path.

This messiness is normal—just part of the deal when we’re working on something important over the long term.

But sometimes it’s like the path is all mess and confusion, and no actual progress.

And although sometimes you simply do have to work through a ton of mess and confusion before you start making progress, often we’re making things harder for ourselves than they need to be.

Today, we’re going to talk about how to stop making it so difficult and start helping yourself move more in the right direction, more consistently over the long term.

This is not about how to avoid the mess completely.

It’s more about how to bring yourself back to the path of progress more effectively, instead of always getting completely derailed and going through this drawn—out struggle to get back on track.

It’s not just about getting yourself back to where you were though.

At the very least, we want to be able to stay on the path (or close to it) more consistently so we can keep inching forward.

But we also want to go beyond that.

We want to get to the point where we can make faster progress, and ultimately put ourselves in a position to do things much greater than what we might think we’re capable of right now.

So I’ve got a simple 4—step guide for how to do this:

— Step 1 is fully accepting where and who you are.

— Step 2 is building foundations.

— Step 3 is testing the waters of expansion.

— And step 4 is stepping off the cliff or diving in.

I’ll explain each of these properly shortly.

I’ve made and continue to make a lot of mistakes in my pursuit of becoming a better person and building a better life for myself.

I still have plenty of ground to cover, but using this process generally helps me do better than I would if I didn’t use it, so I think it’s worth sharing.

The idea with this is when you’re lost, you start at step 1, then once you’ve completed that you move onto step 2, then onto 3, and then 4.

This will help keep you stable while you build towards being an awesome version of yourself.

You’re always building on the most solid ground with this:

Step 1 is about planting both feet firmly on the ground of reality, so that you can move on to step 2 and build the foundations of whatever thing you’re working on properly.

Then once you’ve built the proper foundation you can safely work on step 3, which is to start pushing yourself into new territory and opening doors to much greater progress.

Because you’ve built a solid foundation, you can safely experiment with things that will help you advance.

You can start taking some risks without everything falling apart, and get some experience in ‘going big’.

Then you’re in a great position to move on to step 4, which is essentially taking bigger risks that can help you make much more progress than you ever thought possible.

If you read last week’s letter about being unrealistic and delusional, this is where you can do that.

If you’ve made it to step 4, getting unrealistic results becomes much more realistic.

We’re going to mostly use examples related to musicians today, but to help you understand this, a simple way to think of it now is this:

You’re a kid who wants to learn how swim.

Step 1 is accepting you have no idea how to swim.

Step 2 is having a parent take you into the water and teach you the basic techniques.

They’re holding you or with you the whole time so you’re safe while you learn what to do.

Step 3 is putting on floaties and going into the pool by yourself while your parent watches you from the side of the pool.

(I’m not sure if ‘floaties’ in just an aussie term, so in case it is, floaties are those things kids wear on their arms when they’re in the water so they float.)

Then step 4 is no floaties, no parents—you’re by yourself and you dive into a deeper pool, and figure out how to stay afloat and how to swim laps.

And if at any point in the process of you trying to make progress with something you find yourself totally lost again, you can just go back to this 4—step process and it’ll get you right back on track.

So regardless of whether you’ve been completely stuck with something for ages or you’ve just hit a wall recently and you’re not sure what to do, you can try using this process.

Just start at step 1 and build from there.

The beauty of this is that, even if you have to repeatedly come to this 4—step process for the same thing, you’ll be starting from a better place every time you do.

Step 1 will not always look the same for you, because if you’re following this process, you’re constantly levelling yourself up.

If this isn’t really making sense to you yet, don’t worry, it will.

Let’s now talk about these steps individually so we’re on the same page about what they actually are, and how this can help you constantly level up and make solid progress.

Step 1: Fully accepting where and who you are.

Whenever you feel like you’ve wandered off the path or you’re just completely stuck, I think you can always come back to this.

I’ve found that a lot of the time when I feel lost, I’ve lost touch with the real work I need to do.

I’m either working on the wrong stuff and/or I’m avoiding the truth about what I should be doing.

This often comes down to me not accepting where I’m truly at.

I want to be someone who’s at ‘x’ point, and I don’t want to accept that I haven’t earned it yet.

So I avoid the work that will bridge that gap between where I’m at and where I want to be.

And I instead try to position myself as someone who’s above that work (could be physical or mental) by skipping over it and going straight to doing things that someone further along would do.

I realise that can sound like a good thing, and sometimes it can be.

Acting as your future self can be super powerful because it helps you step into that version of yourself and make faster progress.

But this isn’t the good side of it.

This isn’t me having more courage, confidence, and discipline like my future self does.

This is me pretending I’m above the work that is required of someone to get to the place I’m pretending to be.

I do this all the time, and I have to constantly check myself.

Because I usually end up in a situation that’s more embarrassing or frustrating than the one I’d be in if I was being honest about where I’m at and just doing the work.

So to give you an example that may be relevant to you:

One thing I see with a lot of musicians when they’re trying to build their online presence is this expectation that they’ll get amazing results without having to do some of the stuff that’s required.

Something extremely common is musicians asking me why they aren’t getting better results from the stuff they’re putting out, then me checking their stuff out…

…and seeing they’ve barely put anything out at all.

The reality for most musicians is that they have to put out tons of stuff—probably way more than they think—to get somewhere decent.

And you may not like that, and think it’s unfair that musicians have to do this bullshit in the first place (which is a conversation for another time)…

But if you’re entering the social media arena with the intention of building a decent presence, that’s the game you’ve agreed to play.

To continue on with this but also introduce another example:

Some of these musicians will point to artists who have only released a handful of songs, or put out a handful of posts or something, and say “look, this artists got x result from only this, why am I not getting that?”

This is why 100% honesty about where you’re at and who you are is step 1.

The reason you aren’t getting the same results as this other artist is because they have something you don’t that has helped them.

It could be experience or reps.

Could be skills.

Could be some kind of appeal.

Could be knowledge about the tools they’re using.

Could be circumstances.

Whatever it is, it isn’t random.

And even if it’s something you consider unfair, like them having more money for marketing or time or something, that’s still a reason.

And you’re still going to have to do something about it if you want to get a better result.

Being totally and completely real with yourself is the only way you’re going to move forward here in a way that’s actually sustainable.

You’ve got to sit down and confront reality:

Have I actually done the work?

Have I got my reps in?

Am I being the kind of person that would get ‘x’?

Am I really at the stage I think I am, or am I actually not as far along in ‘x’ way as I wish I was?

What am I avoiding that deep down I know I need to confront?

It can hurt to be real with yourself like this.

Sometimes you’ll get answers you don’t want to hear.

And the thought of that might terrify you because you think it’ll make you vulnerable.

But here’s what I’ve found: There is nothing more freeing than full on, 100% acceptance of where you’re truly at and the person you are.

Every time I sit down with myself to have the hard talk, I walk away from it feeling a new sense of calm. I feel grounded.

Even though I’ve had to admit to a bunch of flaws that expose me as someone who’s not as far along in certain ways as what I thought, I feel less vulnerable.

It makes you feel more confident. More authentic.

You’ve got nothing to hide, from others or yourself.

It’s infinitely more liberating and rewarding to be real about where you’re at than to constantly wear the mask of someone who’s further along.

It lets you breathe fresh air. It feels like a fresh start, a new day.

You can pretty much always find an answer by asking questions like these.

You can find a next step.

A way out of the mist and into clear progress.

Once you get fully real with yourself—100% honest about where you’re at—it’s easier to see what to do next.

The answer becomes more obvious.

It may even have been obvious the whole time, but you weren’t accepting it as a possible solution because you were pretending to be someone you’re not.

I cannot stress enough how freeing it is to do this.

A lot of people don’t ask themselves these questions enough, and it leads to creating a false and worse reality than the one they could have.

Going back to the example of the musician who’s dissatisfied with their results on social media: Right now they might be avoiding the truth.

They just think something like “I deserve a bigger audience”, but they don’t do what’s actually required for them to have that (because they’re not being honest about where they’re at)…

…then end up having a smaller audience than they would if they’d just done the stuff they needed to do anyway, right?

100% full on honesty and acceptance is the first step to getting unstuck in these situations and making progress.

So if you’re trying to build your online presence, this might mean taking a super honest look at the stuff you’re putting out.

If you’re a producer struggling to get your tracks to feel exciting and you’re bending over backwards with mixing techniques to get there but it’s not working, this could mean being 100% real about the quality of your ideas.

Or it may mean sitting with yourself and saying:

“Look Alex, you want x thing, but are you really the kind of person who deserves this right now?

Do you have the skills yet? Do you have the mental fortitude? Are you truly doing what’s required?”

You may also need to get feedback from others to help you figure this out too.

The mental gymnastics I used to do to avoid confronting reality are insane.

There are plenty of things I should seek external feedback for that I don’t, but when I do it’s awesome.

Just make sure you’re getting feedback from the right people.

If you’re asking your grandma about why your music content isn’t performing well, you’re probably not going to get a decent answer, right?

Other people can help you get some much needed perspective on topics you’re way too close to.

There have been times recently where someone else has been able to point out where I’m going wrong that I just haven’t been able to see.

On paper, it’s the most obvious thing in the world, but I’ve been so close to the thing it just wouldn’t click.

The first step is 100% honesty.

Again, it can hurt.

But it’s also incredibly freeing. Once you do it, you’ll feel better.

Even if it means you have to take what feels like a step back temporarily, it still feels better.

You feel more stable. More real.

And you can use this first step anytime you like when you’re trying to make progress on something.

You don’t have just have to do it when you’re first learning about a topic, or developing a skill.

Any time you feel lost, just sit down and ask:

What is really going on here? What’s the real situation? Am I still being honest with myself or have I drifted back into living in a different reality?

I’ve been doing this a lot lately as I’m working through some pretty hardcore self—sabotage stuff.

Every time something’s not going well and I feel stuck, I ask some of these questions, and I get an answer that helps me start moving forward again.

There’s always something I was overlooking or ignoring that I can work on again to get back to a good place.

And like I was saying earlier, every time you have to come back to this step 1, it’s not going back to the same place.

The first time you get honest with yourself about where you’re at, you might have to accept that you know nothing, you’ve done nothing, and you have to start from the very beginning to actually get somewhere.

But the next time you have to ask yourself this, you might be like “well I’ve got a pretty good handle on the fundamentals, but I’m honestly not showing up enough”.

So you don’t have to learn everything again—this time it’s just a matter of showing up more, right?

And maybe the time after that where you have to ask yourself this, you accept that, although you have been showing up and doing the fundamental stuff consistently, you’ve become complacent with trying to actually improve and therefore placed a cap on the results you can get.

Hopefully you can see where I’m going with this.

If you keep coming back and having these real conversations with yourself, you can not only stay more on track, but continue moving forward too.

And the more often you do this, the more you can close the gap between wandering off the path and bringing yourself back to it.

The more radical honesty you have in your life, the more progress you will make.

When was the last time you did this with yourself?

If it’s been a while, give it a go asap.

Step 2: Building foundations.

Once you’ve been real with yourself about where you’re at, you can then move on to step 2, which is building foundations.

Take anything you want to make progress in.

Once you’ve been real with yourself about where you’re at with it, you can then start building it up from the ground you’re currently standing on.

We’ll use building on social media as an example here.

Let’s say you’re a musician who’s been struggling with getting yourself out there for ages.

You finally get real with yourself and accept that, although you’ve been opening the app 40 times a day, you’ve only been occasionally showing up in a way that’s actually getting you anywhere.

You accept that you have big holes in your strategy, and that in order to start making real progress with it, you’re going to need to suck it up and fill those holes.

So how do you do it? Where do you start? What do you focus on?

The fundamentals.

The foundations of building an online presence. What are they?

• For one, you need to put stuff out on a regular basis, and stuff that clearly communicates who you are and helps you connect with others.
• You also need a solid strategy for making sure people actually see that stuff.
• And you also need to make sure you’re maintaining good relationships with the people who come into your world.

What the foundations aren’t are things like viral content ideas, hooks, hacks and tricks to get more views, elaborate strategies for gaming the system, that kind of stuff.

A lot of musicians will completely overlook the fundamentals and jump straight to those things.

They go down these rabbit holes researching all these different things about how to get ahead on social media, not realising that they’re wasting their time.

Because even if they do come across something actually useful, it probably won’t work until they’ve got the fundamentals down.

This is crazy common.

If you come to me and ask how you can make better progress with social media, I’m first going to ask these:

— are you actually putting stuff out on a regular basis?

— does that stuff clearly and authentically show you who are? is it easy to ‘get’?

— have you got something in place to get eyes on the stuff you’re putting out?

— how are you building relationships with these people?

If the answer to any of these is “no” or “I don’t know”, that’s where you start.

Obsessing over getting hundreds of thousands of views, etc. will do nothing but make you feel even worse if you haven’t built the foundations.

You will almost definitely get further in this situation by taking the time to work on a proper strategy that involves:

• Defining and communicating your artist identity
• Showing up more consistently
• And actually interacting with other people on the platform like a human.

Once you’ve done that, then you can look at how to take it to the next level.

This is again why step 1 is being 100% honest about where you’re at.

You might be someone who has completely skipped over building the foundations because you didn’t even consider them as something you need to work on.

But once you get real, and you’re like “oh shit, I’m not even doing this basic stuff” you start to get much clearer on why things aren’t working for you—and how to get them to start working.

People often don’t like doing the fundamental stuff.

It feels small-time to them. Too basic; that’s only for beginners.

But what I think a lot of people don’t realise is just how far these fundamentals can get you.

They’re treated like they don’t matter all that much, yet they’re usually responsible for a large part of the success of a thing.

Think about making music.

One of the most fundamental parts of a great tune is the idea, right?

It’s like the first thing you do—you mess around and come up with an idea.

If it’s a great idea, everything you do beyond that to develop it and turn it into a finished thing will lead to a better result.

If it’s a terrible idea, you’re going to hit wall after wall and you might not ever finish the tune because you just can’t get excited about it.

Take a great song you love. If you removed the awesome idea from that, the most fundamental thing… what would you be left with?

Basically nothing, right?

A bland song with nothing to grab you.

The whole thing goes out the window because you removed like 80% of what made it so great.

So see, the foundations, the fundamentals are a huge part of why something works.

Yet so many people completely disregard them or place them down the very bottom of what’s important to help them move forward.

If you’re struggling to make progress, it is worth constantly checking in with yourself and asking “are the foundations still solid?”.

And if they’re not, you don’t just ignore that—you fix them.

If you’ve been struggling to build your artist presence on social media and you’re focused on all this 5% stuff, like I mentioned before (hooks, hacks, that kind of thing)…

…but it feels like even on the occasions that does seem to do something it doesn’t lead anywhere…

Turn around. Look back at the fundamentals.

Are they still in place?

If not, that’s your answer.

Just like step 1, you can always come back to step 2 when you’re stuck.

When you don’t know what to do, you make sure you’re being honest with yourself, then you check if the fundamentals are in place.

And anytime you want to learn or build something new, on top of what you’ve already built, start with the fundamentals.

Think of a pyramid.

Once you’ve built the first layer, you can start building the next layer on top of it, right?

Continuing on with the online presence example, if you’ve got the basics down (consistently putting stuff out, driving traffic reliably, maintaining relationships), and you now need to work on making more impact with the stuff you’re putting out…

You can dive into the foundations of impactful content.

You can first make sure you’re ticking at least one of the following boxes:

• Is it entertaining in some way?
• Is it inspiring?
• Is it helpful or useful?
• Is it emotionally compelling?
• Or does it make others feel seen or heard?

And then once you’ve nailed that part of it, you know you’re moving in the right direction and can take it even further.

Maybe from here you say “ok well I’ve got a solid foundation for a social media strategy.

I also have a solid foundation for the content I’m putting out to increase its impact.

Now I can work on tightening it up and getting it to reach a lot more people and get more of a response.”

This might be where things like making your videos more punchy, working on attention grabbing hooks, structuring the posts in a more digestible way, etc. come into play.

These are important things that will help you…

But you have to get a handle on the other stuff first, otherwise it won’t go anywhere.

This is why when I get musicians coming to me asking how they can improve their stuff, I don’t give them this information right away, because they haven’t done the foundational stuff yet—it would just go to waste.

I think people often see skipping over the fundamentals as some kind of fast track to success.

But the real shortcut is doing the real work.

The answer is most likely in the work you’re avoiding.

So while in some cases it may take a little longer to get where you want, when you build strong foundations, it’s real progress. It’s lasting.

It’s not going to crumble at the first sign of difficulty.

And once you have a stable base, you can start experimenting with the next level, while also continuing to make progress and not going backwards—because you have solid ground beneath you, right?

I really cannot stress enough how important it is to value the foundations of anything more highly.

They are responsible for most of your success, even if you can’t see that right now.

When you’re stuck, and you’ve been real with yourself, your next step is identify any gaps in the foundations of the thing you’re stuck with, and close them.

Step 3: Testing the waters of expansion.

Ok, so now we’re in a pretty good place.

You now have two really solid things to focus on when you get lost, to help you come back to the path:

• 100% honesty about where you’re at
• And making sure the foundation is solid

These two things alone will help you make heaps more progress.

But what’s next? How do we start taking it to the next level?

Well, you’re now in a place where you can start experimenting.

It’s at this point you can dip your toes into more dangerous waters.

You can start exploring more risky and “out there” stuff to help you advance in whatever thing you’re pursuing, but without ruining everything you’ve done so far.

To keep the examples simple and music—related, sometimes when I talk to musicians about building their online presence, they’ll have these really cool unique ideas for how to show up.

They’ll tell me about all of these things they want to try that I haven’t really heard of from anyone else.

But while that’s exactly the path we want to go down and it’s amazing to think like that, if these musicians don’t really have any experience with this stuff yet, they can’t make it work.

And the reason for this is almost always because they haven’t presented it in the right context.

What I mean is that the ideas might be awesome, but either people aren’t responding to it because they way it’s being presented is not how they’re used to consuming stuff in this setting…

…or the musician doesn’t have their foundational strategy in place and so—even though their stuff might be great—it doesn’t reach or connect with people properly.

We don’t want to give up on the wild, unique, experimental stuff though.

That’s where all the gold is.

We don’t want to quickly give up and go back to doing what everyone else does that ‘works’.

What we want to do is have that musician build the foundations.

So when they show up with these awesome and unique ideas, they know how to deliver them in a way that’s actually going to resonate in the context of social media.

If a musician understands the basics of how to get people to see their stuff, what their main goals are with content based on where they’re at, and a few things about how people respond to stuff in this setting…

They can then take their crazy unique ideas and make the necessary adjustments to get it to work.

And these don’t have to be massive changes.

You might just need to make a few small tweaks to get it to better ‘sit’—just like EQing musical elements in a mix.

So to make it clear what I’m trying to say here:

If you first build your foundations, you can start getting weird with it and taking risks without sacrificing all your progress.

You can say “Ok, I have this crazy idea and I know how to make it work in this context” so you’re much more likely to make progress and enjoy the process because you can actually get results.

Another way to easily understand this is imagine you wanted to write crazy riffs on the guitar, like super unique and boundary—pushing stuff.

In which situation are you more likely to get somewhere with that?

Scenario #1, where you’ve never picked up a guitar before and you just go straight to trying to make the crazy stuff?

Or scenario #2, where you have a solid understanding of how to actually play this thing (you’ve built the foundations) and you can easily break the rules in a smart way?

Number 2, right?

So when it comes to not only staying on the path of progress but also moving along it faster, the fastest, most solid way to advance is doing the real work.

• You get totally real with where you’re at so you know exactly where to start, even if it feels embarrassingly close to the starting line.
• You then build up those foundations—you lay all the important bricks.
• Then you can start safely thinking much bigger and venturing outside your usual territory.

Based on my own experience, this slower, steadier path, is actually the faster path.

So let’s assume you’re ready to take this third step. What do you do?

Remember at the very beginning of this episode how I said you might make big plans, start carrying them out, and then end up totally lost?

Now that you’ve got steps 1 and 2 down, you can go back to those big plans and try again.

Only this time, if you get lost and wander off the path, it’s easy to bring yourself back.

You just make sure that you’re keeping the fundamentals intact as you go forward, and you’ll be safe.

It’s like tying a rope to yourself that’s also attached to a tree on your path, so you can wander off, but if you get lost, you just follow the rope back to your path again.

So what big plans have you got?

It’s time to start testing some of the scarier stuff out.

You don’t have to go all the way yet (that’s step 4), but you can start venturing out a bit.

This could mean something as small as deciding you’re going to start trying new styles of content for your online presence.

You now have a solid understanding of how and why certain things work at a fundamental level, so you can experiment with new stuff knowing what important things you need to keep in place to increase the chances of it working.

Or it could mean something bigger, like working towards quitting your job and going all in on your creative career.

Because you’ve built the foundations (which in this case might be things like understanding how to generate income from your creativity and making sure you’ve got the skills to do it), you’re now in a better position to start dipping your toe into this world and seeing what happens.

For example, in this case, maybe you start applying for freelance jobs on the side.

Or you might consider cutting your 9—5 hours down by one day so you can start trying to generate money from your creative stuff one day a week.

The important takeaway here is that you’ve built yourself a solid ground to stand on.

So that when you start peeking into the unknown, you won’t end up so lost that you lose everything and have to go back to the very beginning.

It means that even if you do wander off a bit too far, you have a straightforward way to get yourself back to land:

— Radical honesty about your situation.

— Check the foundations are solid.

— Then you can just try some risker stuff again and see if you can get further with it this time.

I know I’m really hammering this point home, but you can save yourself a lot of unnecessary pain and anxiety by following this process.

You’ll feel much more in control, and much more confident in your ability to handle being out of control when you start taking risks.

There will still be plenty of discomfort and risk and anxiety and all of that—no matter what.

But at least with this process you can continue to mostly move forwards, and drastically reduce how many times and how far you go backwards.

So this is step 3: Testing the waters of expansion.

Starting to take some risks and wandering outside your comfort zone to see what you’re made of.

But you’re doing it in a smart way—in a way that won’t ruin your life.

If you do this enough, you can build some real experience with taking risks and getting uncomfortable.

And once you’ve got that, you’re in a much better position to start going much bigger and making even greater progress.

Let’s move onto the final step.

Step 4: Stepping off the cliff/diving in.

Like I said earlier, if you read last week’s letter about being unrealistic and delusional, this is the stage where you can fully embrace that.

This is the stage where you can “go 10x”, as Dr. Benjamin Hardy would say.

Maybe you go from working a 9—5 to pursuing your creative career full time.

Maybe you go from small—time projects to massive scary projects that could skyrocket your growth.

Maybe you go from daily busywork to discarding the 80% of stuff that’s holding you back and going all in on the 20%.

By this point, you’ve built evidence that you’re someone who can handle risk, who can handle the unknown.

You’re not the amateur who likes to dream big but hasn’t been honest with themselves about what they truly need to do in order to get it…

…who hasn’t built the foundations…

…and who hasn’t ever actually experimented with risk or going big at all.

You’re actually in a place where taking these kind of big risks is the right thing to do for your growth, for your progress.

I’ve done this a few times in my life:

• Taking the leap from 9—5 work to full time creative career
• Making big uncomfortable investments that forced me to level up
• Taking on projects I wasn’t 100% sure I could handle, but made it work

And while admittedly there are a few things I should be doing by now that I still get stuck with, I have enough experience in this step 4 to be able to pass on a bit of insight.

When you get to this stage, you are standing on the edge of a cliff.

You know that if you jump off, you may very well end up in a whole new world that transforms you as a person…

But you also could end up in a whole new world that overwhelms you and makes you want to run back to safety.

This is again why we build up to this.

Why we build evidence that you can handle it.

You will not be able to avoid the intense discomfort, but you will be more likely able to deal with it and power through.

And this intense discomfort is not all bad.

The other side of it is intense excitement—the possibility of radical expansion and fulfilment.

If you’ve built up to this step properly, you will be able to focus more on that and have it overpower the intense discomfort.

This stage is where insane progress happens.

It’s where you show yourself what you’re truly capable of.

It’s where you make the kind of leaps you used to think you’d never be able to make.

And if you’re here, you’re ready for it.

Even though part of you won’t feel like you are, you are.

It’s at this point that your excuses are most likely invalid.

It’s time to just dive in.

All the work you’ve been doing leading up to this point has prepped you for this.

If you look back at and run through the previous steps, and you’re able to check them off…

• Are you being totally real with yourself?
• Have you built the foundations?
• Have you experimented and built experience with risk and expansion?

…then there’s nothing left to do but take the leap.

This whole process, in my view, is a smart way to make progress—at least based on the experiences I’ve had and the experience creatives I know have had.

It reduces unnecessary confusion and stagnation.

It lets you wander off into the chaos while knowing how to maintain enough order that you don’t put yourself in really bad situations.

It gives you clear direction and shrinks your ability to lean on excuses that stop you from moving forward.

If you follow this, there’s no reason not to grow, to make much greater progress than what you’ve been making.

I’m actually getting fired up about taking the next step myself thinking about this.

I hope this gave you something to think about, hope it helped in some way, and hope you’re feeling positive about moving forward this year.

If you’re interested in getting help from me in some way, you can check out my site and please feel free to email me with questions.

Ok, let’s call it.

Go make some progress and talk again soon 🙂